December Cons

December is a pretty quiet month for the Con circuit. It seems that most people, aside from spending time with family and friends, are gearing up for the January cons/the 2011 con year in general.

Now, if you have the funds for it, is a good time to start planning your circuit and pre-registering. Prices are pretty low this early on for most cons starting in March.

The major cons, such as SDCC, will have pretty much sold out by now or have prices at their max, such as Anime Los Angeles.

As a quick note, as of today SDCC registration was closed due to "issues with registration." Hopefully this means there are still some tickets left for attendance and you'll have another chance to register. Also, their volunteer registration will open in January 2011.

Last note, SGIS con registration will open soon. This year's theme "Tea Party". Bring your best tea party/Wonderland outfit to the snow.

Where the monies go

This post if a follow up for SGIScon.

Quite a few people wonder how much it takes to run the con, where the money goes exactly, and if H4773r and I make a profit. This long blog post is about such business. H4773r had originally announced he'd hold a Saturday meeting for SGIS biz, but no one really seemed interested in hearing about it. I know that doesn't stop the curiousity so I'm going to post the info anyway. Here's general info about the con: we asked $25 a person if you're staying the whole weekend and $15 a person if you staying a day. The weekend is defined by Friday (usually afternoon) til Monday afternoon. What the money gets you: heat! (it takes funding to keep the propane tank going all weekend), a small con token, the Sad Geek award for the winner, and FOOD! Over 95% of the funding is toward food/food related materials. H4773r's family has been nice enough in the past to give us some food donations to help us out, although this year's donation was smaller than last year's. Con goers are always allowed to take food home, whether you pack a sandwich and chips to go or take a whole 2 liter of unopened soda. Since you paid for it you get to keep it. I insist you take food home. INSIST!!!! If for any reason we have extra money left over, people get money back (no joke). So no, H4773r and I don't make any profit from this at all. In fact, we've lost money every year putting this event together. This year we came short $114.65. Let me show you why...

Here's the entire list of what we bought for SGIS Con this year

3 packs bacon

3 meat lasagnas

2 3 gallons of milk

1 carton of oranges

4 gallons of OJ

6 lb. salad (3 lb each)

1 package of cutlerly

10 dozen eggs

1 package of apples

2 cheese pizzas

1 pepperoni pizza

1 all meat pizza

1 package of bowls

1 package of red cups

6 loaves of bread

6 loaves of garlic bread (3 each package)

1 package of plates

4 rolls of toilet paper

4 gladware bowls

1 package of garbage bags

1 bottle of syrup

4 bags of cereal

1 bottle of honey

1 bottle of mustard

1 bottle of canola oil

1 package of butter

1 jar of strawberry jam

5 lbs. of spaghetti

2 air fresheners

1 jar of mayo

1 bottle of Itilian dressing

1 bottle of ranch dressing

1 jar of PB

1 bottle of parmesean cheese

1 package of Swiss (12 slices)

2 packages of pepper jack (24 slices)

1 package of American (24 slices)

2 packages of shredded carrots

2 cucumbers

2 packages of sliced mushrooms

1.74 lb of tomatoes

5 packages of ham (16 slices each)

3 packages of salami (16 slices each)

1 package of sandwich baggies

2 boxes of pancake mix

3 jars of spaghetti sauce

1 package of tea

1 bag of shredded cheese

1 sm package of spaghetti

1/4 sheet cake

1 package of icing

2 tubes of icing

1 2 gallon of milk

2.45 lbs of ground beef

7 lbs of ice

4 rolls of toilet paper

3 bags of chips

7 limes

1 bag of m&m's

2 boxes of Chips Ahoy cookies

1 package of turkey (16 slices)

2 packages of Oreos

2 bottles of cola

2 bottles of dr west

1 bottle of ginger ale

1 bottle of tonic

1 Leia bobble head

6 packs of Star Wars cards

Filling the propane gas tank

Which total's out to about $619.65

Here's the list of what H4773r's mom donated

1 box nutty butters

1 package chex mix cocoa

1 package muddy buddies

11 12 packs of soda

1 bag pretzels

1 bag fritos

1 bag tortilla chips

1 bag cheezeits

1 2 gallon apple juice

1 bag fritos

1 bag potato chips

7 bottles of soda

Which came to about $50

If all my guests had shown up and paid we'd only have brought in $585. As it was not eveyone showed up and not everyone was able to pay. I'll admit there was some not great planning on my part. But we had about 27 people that we supposed to be there eating and I still had food leftover because not everyone showed up. The things we ran out of and had to buy at the supermarket in Arnold really hurt the budget as well. But it just seems to happen. Of course next year I'll make adjustments again and buy less of some items and more of other items. (i have lists and lists of everything from what we bought to what we ran out of to what was suggested for next year.) Hopefully get some donations or will be able to raid parent's fridges/pantries for basics (like oil and butter). But we may very well raise the price up to $30. Again shit happens that we can't control. People say they'll come and then don't. The propane tank is low. Family doesn't have the funds to donate as much food. Ecetera, ecetera. Really what I'd like from our guests is an accurate head count (please show up if you say you will) and bring your "registration" money if you didn't manage to pay in advance.

And for those who say, "Wow, that's a lot of bitching and a lot of money to lose. Why the hell would you keep doing it?" The answer is because my fiance is an awesome guy. And if his birthday wish is to celebrate by having 20 friends and friends of friends show up at his grandma's cabin and party by playing all sorts of geeky games, then so be it. Besides, over the 95% of the people that do come are awesome people and we've both made new friends that I appreciate.

I'd like to give some special thanks to Chris Thomas, Shawn and Stephanie for all their help and hard work. If you read this post and would like to pitch in and help H4773r and I pay some bills this month because we were over our budget please hit up the donate pay pal button. Thanks again everyone.

SGIS Con

This is my personal account of SGIScon.

(Pre-con) Thursday

We left super late Thursday evening. I take the blame. I hate packing and had really been putting it off. So by the time I got off work and got home I was already running late. I hadjust enough time to finish packing as some of guests (speckly, SteveWesMoots, and Schmat Guy John) arrivedthat we were giving a ride up to Arnold. Once I was packed up we shoved everything in the Shennavan. Wemade a stop at Walgreens for my Drammamine and other snacks then finally got back on the road after 8pm. We made alate stop in Manteca for a dinner at Taco Bell and finally made it into Arnold by 10pm-ish. It was an easy ride up. It'dbeen pretty dry the during the week so almost no snow. Surprisingly, a bunch of guests decided that they wanted tocome up early as well. So we had the Stockton group join us for the night (Laura, Mario Hugo, Moose, Nozomi,Carlos and Mouse). H4773r and I called it an early night because we knew we had to get up early to go buy allthe food.Everyone else, as far as I know, stayed up a bit getting settled in and playing some games.

Friday

Even though H4773r and I were out the door by 10am we didn't get back from food shopping til 3pm. It was a bit annoying since we pretty much had to leave a house full of people with no food. Bad planning on my part, but I'm not used to having people there this early. The day pretty much went: drive into Escalon and pick up food donations from H4773r's family and some cash. Drive to Stockton's Costco, get new Costco card, do all the Costco shopping and then hit up the Savemart nearby and get all the grocery shopping done and finally get back up the hill. People were grumpy and I didn't really blame them. But once everyone had eaten they were in a much better mood. Saturday saw the rest of the guests arrive: squirrelinacoma, her bf Jeremy, the Davis group (f3r3tt, Shawn, Mario, Alvin, Matt) and Chris and Amanda. The day was spent gaming on various consoles, playing various board games, watching Something Something Something Darkside, and prepping for the D&D campaign.

Saturday

A bit of a late morning for some. The day was filled with tons of gaming and getting started on the D&D campaign. A few people went to find some snow and H4773r and I went for a quiet walk. Overall most people stayed in and enjoyed relaxing and gaming. Chris and Amanda went home, but later that night chickwithgun arrived along with her gf L2. Also we celebrated with drinking night! Saturday has been reserved for getting blitzed. I enjoyed 5 mixed hard alcohol drinks myself as shown by my drunken tweet/fb post: "completwel inebr8ated but enjpying myself. i know this is completely mispelled more or ledd. but having fun #sgiscon"

Sunday

A very late morning for myself as I tried sleep off my hangover. As soon as breakfast was consumed everyone hauled ass to find snow. While chickwithgun and L2 hauled ass home. We also lost squirrelinacoma and Jeremy. The weather finally started to turn. I'm glad I only really had to deal with the rain, and for those that wanted snow they surely found it and had fun. In fact, they nearly got in trouble for sledding on private property and had to make a quick get away when the cops arrived. D&D continued through the night. Since it was officially H4773r's birthday this day we had cake after dinner. I finally got a chance to play some Silent Hill: Homecoming while the campaign was talking place. The night closed with a bunch of people playing more Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 before quiet hours.

Monday

Up super fucking early, in my opinion, to get everyone else up and out. By now the rain was heavily coming down and I get anxious about people getting safely home since so many have a long drive ahead of them. I had Shawn and Nozomi helping with breakfast again thankfully. Right after breakfast H4773r cued up closing music and gave his closing announcements as well as handing out the winner of SGIS con. This year's winner was Matt, who got himself a lovely bobblehead slave Leia. Others were given Star Wars trading cards with H4773r's atrocious handwriting scrawled on it. Then everyone began packing their cars, cleaning up the mess, and taking leftovers.

Our drive home was fairly long and we left fairly late as we had to make sure everyone else was gone first and also we had to make a garbage run (7 bags full). The weather home was pretty bad. I'll still take rain over snow but we did get to a few points where we were crawling along the road because it was raining so hard.

My overall impression of this year's SGIS Con felt more hectic than last year's. We had a bit more miscommunication with guests then previous years. My budget was completely blown. And I think more guests had personal problems with other guests than previous years. I know it can be hard to get along with a bunch of different personalities all cramped together in cabin for a weekend, and while no one is particularly nasty to anyone I do wish people found other guests less annoying. I also felt less organized this year in some respects. But most everyone seemed to have had a good time and said it would be ok if I raised the price a few dollars for next year. So we'll see. Til next year-May the force be with you.